Author Rank, New Feature on Amazon, Why I Like It

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Pictured Left, “The Old American Artist, a Love Story” – First of Series

A romance and an artist’s story, how could it not be a love story? ;-)

Priced FREE at participating outlets. Please see link above.

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Pictured Right, Second in series, “Rosetta” now available!

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Pictured on Left, “The Children” -

Available Mid-October

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“a beginner’s view: the intent of this blog is to incrementally build a body of thought that works toward integrating various topics, yoga, fitness, and

the arts – it’s a process…”

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Author Rank, New Feature on Amazon, Why I Like It

Pros and Cons

i haven’t read anything yet from any authors or bloggers or readers, from anybody, yet about the reaction or response or sentiment about amazon creating this new feature, author rank

here’s a google search that does include some commentary on this feature, but again, i haven’t had a chance to read any yet (will soon!)

i mention this because, not that i don’t believe in my current opinion that “author rank” is a good thing strongly enough, but that it’s so new, and this is just my immediate first gut reaction

i need to be able to be flexible about our ideas of things that aren’t super crucial to our quality of life ;-)

so, for now, here goes

Cons

* could create undue competitive pressure, when the creative work is, i believe, within ourselves

* could stigmatize authors who have a lot more at stake (ranking or recognition-wise) than i do at this time

* could affect authors negotiating deals for hard copy printing, movies, tv, etc

* tilts total ranking toward authors with lots of titles and more sales scattered through-out time

* rewards quantity and sales over quality and patience (read “slower paced writers”)

Pros

* gives an overall perspective

* lets an author see their efforts’ results in sales relative to other authors on amazon

* doesn’t include freebies

* doesn’t include international sales, ie, i like that the rankings are for the country or area i reside and buy things in

* includes sales across all genres and times

* breaks down rankings as per categories

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Why I Tilt Toward “Like”

quite frankly, the main reason i like this feature is simply that it gave me a good feeling to see that i had what i considered a reasonable ranking -

what that means is, i wasn’t at a number that i know some of my books are at in terms of sales rankings ;-)

being at #2,323 in contemporary romance fiction is, well, not bad

and yes, the day before i was at just under 6,000 in ranking

plus, granted, that’s still a monthly amount equal to buying a good cup of coffee, the lunch special, and maybe a sweet treat side -

but, that’s ok, for now ;-)

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